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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth

I
Married a Communistis one of Philip
Roth’s “Zuckerman” novels. It is
the seventh in the series. Over the last few years I have been working through
this sequence and reading the books in order. I love these works.

I have immensely enjoyed
everything that I have ever read by Roth. His writing contains multiple
insights into people and the world. His wit, as well as his characters, are
often hilarious. When he is tragic, it is devastatingly
effective. The tendency is moving toward tragedy, and less lighthearted
playfulness in the Zuckerman Series, as the books progress and the characters
age. His writing style is easy to digest yet not simplistic. His structured
plots are artfully interlaced with complex and thought provoking themes.

Though a “Zuckerman” Book, Nathan
Zuckerman is not the main character in I
Married a Communist. Instead, he is more of a bystander influenced by the
main players, as well as an interpreter of their actions. The protagonist here
is Ira Ringold, an unsophisticated Newark tough, who goes off to fight World
War II, and who becomes seduced with communist ideology. When Ira returns from
the war, he eventually finds success as a radio actor and marries into upper
crust American society. Ira is not a menace to America, he is no spy or
saboteur, just an very overbearing and naive ideologue. Ira is eventually
brought down less by McCarthyism, then by a terribly dysfunctional relationship
with his wife and stepdaughter.

The Zuckerman books are full of
interesting themes. I will mention that some readers have found that these
works become repetitive. Roth has come under criticism for this perceived
redundancy. See the below link to a New York Times piece about Carmen Callil’s
opinion on this and other issues. Callil contends, among several complaints,
that Roth repeats himself. While in a way, Callil has a point, I ultimately do
not agree with the conclusion.

Roth does tend to explore similar
or even the same themes over and over again in the course of many books. In my
opinion, in Roth’s case, this is not a flaw. Like the composer of a complex
piece of classical music, who starts with a musical theme and repeats it in a
variety of forms over the course of the entire work, Roth imaginatively and
expertly looks at several aspects of the human condition from multitude of
angles and points of view. He accomplishes this over a series of books. Like
the composer who restates a chosen theme using different keys, emphasis. tempo,
etc., Roth takes an idea, and applies it to various people and situations that
may be too diverse to fit into one novel.

One of Roth’s most important
reoccurring motifs is the concept of human identity, or the way in which a
person and others thinks about “self”. Roth’s thinking about what it means for
a person to have identity owes much, to both Shakespeare, who is often
referenced directly and indirectly by Roth’s characters, and F. Scott
Fitzgerald, particularly the Great Gatsby’s conception of the American propensity to reinvent
and shift identities.

How precisely does Roth explore
identity? In I
Married a Communist, the various characters try to establish their identities, slip in and out of
identities, hide their identities, fake identities, and finally have invalid
identities forced upon them by others. The later sub - theme; that of having a
false identity forced upon you, fits in well with the era described here. Most
of the narrative takes place of post World War II America, when a multitude of
non - communists were falsely accused and identified as being communists. The
way that Roth weaves together this complex lattice of character and identity,
as the various personalities evolve and interact, is a wonder.

For instance, I
Married a Communist’s character of Eve
Frame is born and raised Jewish. As she becomes accepted in the White Anglo
Protestant world of mid twentieth century upper class America, she hides,
perhaps even from herself, her Jewish origins, and actually develops real
feelings of anti – Semitism. Later she is indifferent to the fact that her
husband is a dyed in the wool communist (not someone who is falsely accused,
but the real thing). Later still, she changes her “self” again and poses as a
right wing, flag waving, anti –communist patriot, but privately admits that
this position is just an act. Eve’s shifting persona interacts with a variety
of others, who also share the all too human trait of having shifting, false,
and misinterpreted selves.

My advice for anyone wishing to
delve into the Zuckerman books is not to start I
Married a Communist since it is late in the series. As a “Completest”, I
would start at the beginning with Ghost
Writer. The first four novels can actually be found in one volume as Zuckerman
Bound. If one definitely does not want to read all the books, American
Pastoral can be read standalone (Nathan Zuckerman is not even the main
character in this one either), and is well worth it.

It sounds like the book club reading of Exit Ghost might be a fun thing to participate in. i have heard that this book makes references to Ghost Writer with a major character returning, thus it might be a god idea to read that one first. It was superb book in its own right.

I have not yet read Portnoy's Complaint, its reputation, as well as your review, make it sound well worth it. I will surely give it a try when I have finished the Zuckerman books.

I prefer the Zuckerman from the 'Zuckerman Bound' trilogy to the Zuckerman from the 'America' trilogy (which, nevertheless, is a finer work of literature): funnier, more neurotic, more irresponsible, more honest about himself. The older Zuckerman is a bit dour, and I even wonder why he's in this trilogy. I've still got 'The Counterlife' and 'Exit Ghost' to go - I didn't read them in order, I regret that now.

Miguel, I agree, the younger Zuckerman was funnier and more interesting.

As for why he is even in the later books, I think, particularly in American Pastoral, that Roth is saying something about how we wrongly perceive people, and he is doing it though the erroneous perceptions of Zuckerman. We know Zuckerman got the Swede "wrong" initially. The perfect and unflappable All - American with a bland life that Zuckerman thought that the Swede was, turned out to be wrong.

I think that a point missed by many, was that the entire narrative that makes up the bulk of American Pastoral is also likely not what "really" occurred. Once again, it is Zuckerman's revised interpretation of events, based primarily on a relatively short conversation that he has with the Swede's brother.